What New Yorkers don't like about the new free tuition scholarship

Qualifying students must: enroll full time at a SUNY campus; average 30 credits per year; graduate on time, although the program offers some flexibility so that students facing a hardship can stop, restart or take fewer credits one semester; maintain a minimum grade point average, which will vary depending on the college and program; and live and work in NY state after graduation for the same number of years they received the college financing - or the grant becomes a loan.

"There is no child who will go to sleep tonight and say, 'I have great dreams, but I don't believe I'll be able to get a college education because parents can't afford it, '" Cuomo said in a SUNY press release.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Excelsior Scholarship program to provide freetuition for eligible students at SUNY and CUNY schools is coming under fire for different directions. Students that make the cut will earn their degree for free and, in return, stay in OH for a commensurate number of years that they held the scholarship.

We are highly concerned that free college tuition at SUNY and CUNY schools as part of the recently passed state budget will jeopardize P-TECH. The program is estimated to cost roughly $163 million annually, but that number is dependent on enrollment. It also includes $8 million to pay for resources such as e-books.

At this time, about 84 percent of public college ny graduates remain in ny after graduation, according to the governor's office. Then the state threw a curve: Following graduation, students would have to stay and work in the state for as many years as they received this assistance, or they'd have to repay it.

The big question is how is this going to be paid for? "A lot of us are planning on going on to get our bachelor's".

The program will be phased in over a three-year period beginning this fall.

SUNY and CUNY will not be expected to pick up any of the cost for at least the first four years. Middle-income students would be protected by the automatic increase in the size of their Excelsior Scholarships. Schools have no incentive to control and drive down the costs of educating students knowing that funding is guaranteed.

Offering free tuition is not the panacea. Im one of those who left, saying goodbye to NY and Governor Cuomo in 2013 after 15 years in the state. Should my 1-year-old son apply 16 years from now, a similar percentage increase would price his dad's alma mater at $140,000 a year.

"A part of me thinks it's a good thing because future students will have less debt", Fatiga said. What happens if military service takes you out of NY for a year? "And if we're not going to have it on the federal level, then we're not going to be denied it in NY". Would they be required to move across state lines for four years? This is particularly troubling for community college students, which predominantly serve low-income students, nontraditional students and students of color. The tax wedge is the dollar measure of the income tax rate. The flows of young college graduates out of a state can often be replaced by flows of young college graduates moving in.

Mary Beth Labate, president of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (CICU) - which represents more than 100 private colleges in NY, including Clarkson University and St. Lawrence University - said it's too early to tell exactly how ETAs will impact private colleges.

One cant blame Mr. Cuomo, who became governor January 1, 2011, for identifying population loss in his state as a problem on which to focus.

The bluster of building walls, banning Muslims, and demonizing dissenters has pushed the college cost crisis so far down the national priorities list as to be invisible. But there's a big difference between putting conditions on corporate welfare and telling residents who have lived, paid taxes, and raised families in NY that the price of free college is their children's indentured citizenship.